Laurie

Taking My Cue From the Flower

“Be still, and know that I am God!“– Psalm 46:10

 

Meditations in Motion
Vinca

One of the most difficult admonitions in the Bible for me is the first two words of the verse from Psalms: Be still.

Yes, I know how beneficial it is to quiet my mind, to sit, immobile and listen. To give the narrator of my life a rest and allow my empty cup to be filled with peace and light.

This is a lesson I must learn over and over again each day. It seems as though I am consumed with busyness. I am the bumblebee, trundling endlessly from one flower to the next. But, oh when I am still…

I can feel my blood pressure ticking downward, my patience quota increases, my good humor comes alive, and I can finally and completely exhale.

Let me, I think, take my cue from the flower, rather than the bumblebee. The flower waits, open, silent, immobile.

Be still.

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63 comments

  7. 🙂 Be still. Just breathe. Just be. Actually, studying mindfulness has helped me with that, although I’ve no way mastered the art of being mindful or present or still yet.

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  13. I am a bumble bee, too! Working on taking time to be still though. I have been meditating and it has made a huge difference to me. At least I have that time when I am still and even if my mind is still buzzing, I simply observe it and start again, without judgement. I like the flower as a metaphor for the beauty of stillness.

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    • You don’t seem like the kind of woman who sits still for very long, Michele. You have a lot going on. Since you live in Maine and I imagine it must take a lot of snow for church to be canceled in such a snowy state, I hope you can take it easy today. Enjoy your snow day!

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  26. The image and example made me wonder if the flower ever flinches when the bee comes near. It might be uncomfortable to remain still and allow that bee to do its job, but while the bee takes the nectar it also pollinates the plant. Being still and obedient to my Lord may make me uncomfortable, but He uses it to help me grow and give me continued life! Thanks for sharing!

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  27. Being still in my body is not my problem – it is being still in my mind!

    Part of my research into the brain for my manual has given me a fresh insight into that – you cannot ‘still’ your brain! It is never ‘still’ – not even in deep sleep; brain waves are always measured in some ( many ) frequencies but in our deepest sleep they are mostly of a lower set of frequencies ( subsonic – 1-8 hz. ) compared to our wakefullness state where they are mostly in the 16-32hz ranges. Some studies suggest that we are in our most mindfully aware, loving and compassionate state of meditation when our brainwaves are mostly higher than our normal conscious state: 32 hz and above, a ‘higher’ consciousness if you will. 🙂

    As for the bee and flower analogy, while i think that quieting our mind from the daily sensory distractions that bombard our busy lives is a thing worthy of doing regularly and is a discipline we could benefit from, if the bee just waited the flowers would not be pollinated and they would no longer bee able to reproduce. The waiting flower needs the buzzing bee to survive and thrive. 😉

    Unlike humans however, the bee takes little care for anything but it’s single purpose – to collect the pollen and pass from flower to flower collecting and dispersing it as it goes before returning to the hive to provide the Honey for it’s queen.

    Humans are far too easily distracted from their purpose, if they even know what that is, and do most things for their own benefit (and occasionally their detriment) than for a higher purpose than their own.

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    • I did not know that the frequencies of brainwaves could be measured. That is fascinating! I wonder how meditation affects brainwaves – lowers or raises them.

      So true the flowers need the bee as much as the bee needs the flowers. Even though the bee’s intentions are not to benefit the flower (we think), he still benefits the flower by pollination. Does that still count as a good deed?

      I am easily distracted from my purpose, I will admit. When I was a teacher, I saw that in the students I taught too, but one thing I did notice in kids (usually 15 – 17 year-olds) was much more kindness and happiness than the typical adult demonstrates. More curiosity too. I was constantly amazed by the selfless acts performed by the kids for their peers and for me. I miss that more than anything else about teaching! My belief in the basic goodness of humans was reinforced almost daily.

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      • That’s an inspiring observation concerning your students! One that counteracts the frequent reporting (of a small minority) of negative actions in our media by gangs or troubled individuals.

        I think distraction is a basic tenet of our mind – i think it stems from earlier times when we needed to be alert to any new or unusual situation so as to stay alive; our brains constantly seek the ‘new’ and quicklu assign what is commonplace or regular to a ‘lower shelf’ or our attention/awareness. We require some degree of discipline to stick to something and retain our awareness level on one thing.

        I’m not sure the bee pollinating the flower counts as a good deed? 😉 For one the bee is driven by his nature to do it rather than chosing to go out of his way. 😉

        Also i have long felt that the flower is the one manipulating and ‘controlling’ the bee to do it’s bidding – to meet the flower’s ‘purpose’!

        Yes, brain waves are measured and distinct frequencies have been determined since the 1920’s which relate to our various states of awareness/wakefullness.. Modern medicine often displays these whenever someone has an EEG – usually after a concussion or similar head injury.

        You may have heard of Delta, Theta, Alpha and Beta waves? These are the names for groupings of brain wave frequencies from (in increasing frequency starting from just below 1 hz, or cycle per second, up to 60 hz and higher) Delta (Deep Sleep) through Theta (Regular and r.e.m. sleep), Alpha (Deep relaxation) and Beta (Conscious reasoning awakened state).
        Meditation has been associated with the frequencies of the Theta state ie, lower than deep relaxation, however in recent years a Fifth main category of brainwave, Gamma, has been classified as that of the level of ‘higher’ consciousness as may be observed in monks in their most serene (Divine?) state of meditations. Some call it the Insight Wave.

        They are not perfectly defined sine waves such as we might observe with musical tones – they are far more ‘erratic’ but there are clearly defined ranges of vibrations and cyclic activity occurring in our brains all the time 24/7 and they closely relate to our different levels of awareness which number more than just awake or asleep. 🙂

        WE are able to exert some control over which ones tend to predominate our brain activity through conscious will – it is a skill anyone may (and probably should) learn. Biofeedback (of the kind produced by an EEG machine) would likely be of great benefit when starting to learn how.
        Alternatively we could go to a Buddhist monastery and spend a couple of decades learning to meditate like the monks do? 😉

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      • I absolutely agree about the flower controlling the bee. I read a book about exactly that one time. It was written by an author named Michael Pollan. He selected 4 or 5 plants and wrote about how these plants controlled animals (mostly humans) to benefit themselves (the plants).

        It is true that the bee benefits from pollinating the flower, but I also think most good deeds are not altogether altruistic. When we do a good deed, that makes us feel good about ourselves, so we get a little hit of dopamine too.

        I will need to do some research in brain waves to keep up with you. Thanks for teaching me something new this morning! I did not know about all the different types of waves. The brain is more mysterious and complex than any of us (especially me) realize.

        My meditation habits need some work. Kind of like my yoga. I am too easily distracted by “shiny objects”.

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      • We share the ‘shiny’ object distraction – i think it’s a sing of an alert mind! 😉

        My investigation into the brain is helping me realise more about how my and our brains function and the condition of Awareness ( which has several ‘levels’). We cannot stop our brain activity – it’s neurons are constantly firing whether we are awake or asleep – we would see all kinds of wave frequencies in continual motion.

        To ‘control or brains we need to better associate certain activity with state of awareness level and our ability to ‘focus’ our attention by letting it all happen but trying to ‘favour’ a certain ‘set’ or combination of brain activity with whatever our body is doing at the time.

        AN interesting area i would like to invesigate is something i’m calling Brain Orchestration’ thinking of brainwaves like sound frequencies in music such as an orchestra might play. Then certain frequencies might perform best in ‘harmony’ (chords) with other frequencies or maybe single notes are better performing??

        There may be Dis-chords also where frequencies disrupt others?

        I’m thinking there may be levels within each of the main form of waves like there are notes in an octave of music so there might be 7 (or even 12 – with sharps and flats) increasing frequencies that have corresponding frequencies in the higher and lower wavelengths?

        Although we currently divide the types of brainwaves into 5 major categories it is interesting to me to note that they cover a total of 7 octaves (an octave doubles the first frequency in a group to get the last) so if you start with the lowest recorded wavelengths around 1/2 a cycle per second the first octave ends at 1 cps; doubling it gives 1-2cps; again gives 2-4 cps and this range is roughly the range of the Delta waves! Doubling gives the Theta wave freqs (4-8), doubling again, the Alpha waves (8-16), doubling again, the Beta waves (16-32) and then again for the Gamma waves (32-64)!

        I have a lot of study to do! 😉

        I love that the author of the book about bees and the flowers was named ‘Pollan’ 🙂

        On the topic of who controls who we humans think our larger brain makes us the ones in control, but i read another book recently on parasites and the way some of them control us so as to get us to enable them to breed and reproduce is startling and somewhat of a blow to how intelligent we (I) think we are (I am).

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      • I love the idea of equating brain waves to music. It would be interesting to hear the song made by our neurons firing and assessing whether we are in harmony or discord. I have never heard of anything like that before. Your brain research is amazing.

        I have read about parasites being able to do strange things to organisms they inhabit. In insects, they can even change their host’s gender.

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      • I think there may be a similarity of sorts between brainwaves and musical sound waves but i feel our brainwaves would not make for very ‘pleasant’ listening – unless maybe we ‘switch off’ most of our brain and just listen to a Mozart Symphony and hope for some kind of resonance and harmonies. 😉

        I suspect (pure theorising for the moment) that our brainwaves may indeed show some harmony between certain activities/functions of the brain as well as some disharmony and it would be interesting to see what activities combine to give each – or indeed if our efficiency in one is at times of best harmony or most dischord??

        It is such a huge and fascinating area of research and as yet largely under-explored.

        This morning i was thinking that our most fundamental brainwave – the lowest frequency is possibly related to the electrical impulses that produce our heart beat with a frequency of somewhere between 0.5 and 2 cycles (beats) per second! These are at their relatively most noticeable in our deep sleep patterns when little physical sensory input is being analysed or dreams being made/recalled.

        As for changing gender it has also been noticed in some higher vertebrates also (fish i.e.) – i wonder if parasites have a role their.

        One example i read of in the book involved them taking advantage of human behaviour to make them do something to enable them to fulfil their life cycle: The parasite would be injected into the skin by an insect bite whereupon it would cause the skin to feel a strong burning sensation and the victim would rush to a river or lake to sooth the burn. The parasite needed to lay its eggs in the water after hatching in the victims bloodstream and the victim would also scratch the bite/rash so as to allow the mature parasite to swim out into the water!

        We are less in sole control of ourselves than we may believe. 😉

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      • Yes, so true. There are events going on that influence our actions that we have no idea about. Here in the US we have chiggers, an insect that injects its eggs under human skin. When they hatch, they cause an intense itchy sensation so that we scratch the egg site open and the young chiggers can get out. I have read that the thing to do with a chigger bite is to put clear nail polish on it. that suffocates the eggs. The ingenuity of the human mind is amazing! 🙂

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